“I created a highlight video and posted it to my recruiting profile; now what?”

Student-athletes ask this question a lot. The answer is pretty straightforward: Posting your video is only step one — now you’ve got to let coaches know where to find it.

Read more: The important role of highlight and skills videos in recruiting

You can’t count on a coach simply finding your video

There is a common misconception that college coaches just discover student-athletes. In reality, almost all coaches learn about potential recruits because the student-athlete emailed them their highlight/skills video.

Before emailing your video, remember to create a strategy. Look at the schools on your target list and make sure you’re a good fit athletically and academically. Researching programs ahead of time will help you find the right college coaches to email.

A good way to start is by reviewing the team’s roster. Here, you can see all the athletic information for each athlete. Plus, you can see where they’re from, which will give you some indication on where the coach tends to recruit.    

Read more: What you can learn from a college team’s roster

Your video is a great reason to contact a coach. College coaches just don’t have the time or budget to watch every recruit, so for most sports, video is the best way to get evaluated. If you’ve already emailed a college coach, your video is a great reason to reach back out and touch base with them again. It will help you stay top-of-mind when they’re evaluating other recruits.

Videos should be updated roughly every six months, and you should also consider sending your highlight/skills video to your high school, travel or club coach. In the quest to drive more traffic to your video, it helps to have other advocates in your corner who can give a nudge to a college coach.

Follow up and follow through   

If you follow up with coaches and respond to them in a timely matter, at a minimum, they will take note of your good communication and organizational skills.

For example, if you haven’t heard from a college coach in two weeks, you’ll want to send a follow-up email. Or better yet, call and inquire whether your initial email was received and if the coach had a chance to view it. Ask for any feedback or even if the coach thinks you might be a player in which they would be interested in recruiting.

You can even tag your email with a read receipt to see if the college coach has opened your message. The caveat here is that the email address typically needs to be tied to an organization, so your school email may provide this functionality, especially if they’re associated with Outlook or Gmail.

How to request a read receipt in Gmail:

• Compose the email as usual
• In the lower-right corner of the compose window, click “More Options”
• Click “Request Read Receipt” from the drop down
• Send the message
• How to request a read receipt in Outlook:
• Go to the “File” tab and select “Options”
• Click on “Mail”
• Scroll down to the “Tracking” section
• Check the following boxes: “Delivery receipt confirming the message was delivered to the recipient’s email server” and “Read receipt confirming the receipting viewed the message”

If there is still no response post-follow-up, then consider moving on. You probably won’t get every coach to respond to you, so don’t take it as a rejection. Instead, continue to send noteworthy updates as you progress.

Read more: The best ways to follow up with coaches

Share your video on social media

In addition to posting your video on your recruiting profile, be sure to post it on social media. When it comes to Twitter, follow coaches and programs on your target list as a way to increase views and shares. And try to keep your social media sport-centric by retweeting about your sport.

You can also tag coaches and tweet them, especially if you have had prior contact, as another way to get them to evaluate you.

Read more: How to use social media in recruiting